We went croco cruising down a mangrove swamp and saw three crocodiles 2 females and the 1 and only male !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
australia
Red centre
Slowly managing to upload my photos to Flickr. The pictures from the red centre are now up there. You can see more of these
Rainforest pictures
Finally got a chance to upload some photos from our trip to the Daintree Rainforest. You can see more of them here.
Rainforest, Reef and the Rock
We’ve been pretty quiet over the last week or so, mainly due to doing lots of travelling and not having much access to the internet. Actually, the three nights we spent in the rainforest were in accommodation which was completely off-grid. Anyway, I can confirm we are still alive and have got a lot of photos to download off our cameras. So where have we been?
We started off by flying up to tropical North Queensland and heading to the Daintree National Park as mentioned in Louisa’s post. We stayed at the Exotic Fruit Farm at Cape Trib. It’s a fantastic place and I’ve no idea how they manage to keep the cabins in such great shape, considering the conditions. While we were there we saw cassowaries and crocodiles in the wild and tasted some fruits we’d never heard of before. Black sapote, abiu, rollinia to name some of our favourites. On a snorkelling trip out to the reef I was lucky enough to swim with a couple of turtles and to see a huge stingray.
After getting quite damp in the rainforest (and the dry season at that) we flew to central Australia, direct to Ayers Rock airport. We drove to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) and took some walks around them. We were quite awestruck. Seeing pictures of them doesn’t really compare to seeing them for real.
Today we drove to Alice Springs which is just down the road (i.e. 450km away). The outback scenery was interesting and so were the roadhouses. One just seemed to be full of slightly unhinged people and I’m talking about the staff as well as the customers. Alice Springs is also a bit weird. Nothing seems to work quite right. The first place we tried for lunch had nearly run out of food and the second one took ages and lost half our order. It’s like the whole place is staffed by temporary workers who just arrived.
Dazzling Daintree!
I have just come back from the daintree rainforest in Australia where i have been having a fab time. We only just managed to squeeze in snorkling before the trip home. I can now say i have been to the GREAT BARRIER REEF. I actually saw some fish!!! It was really wavey and hard to swim in. I saw a spotty fish AND a group swimming together. Also yesterday i went to the daintree river and had a crocodile cruise. We saw three!!!! One crocodile was 5 METRES long and it’s tail was a foot wide. Then we also saw a HUGE fat female who the guide said had just caught herself a juicy, yummy wallaby for breakfast. Hope all is well back home!!! 🙂
Koala Kingdom
As a brilliant day trip we took a drive to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary to find some creatures. As well as koalas we saw kangaroos, tasmanian devils, fresh-water crocodiles, snakes, lizards, dingoes, platypuses, wombats, emus, parrots and lots and lots of birds. Events seemed to follow on from the next there were so many. I particuarly enjoyed the rainbow lorikeets being fed. I was also rather amused with the Birds of Prey show and sheep shearing.We were just sitting down to eat our lunch when a goat jumped upon the table!!! It was sooooooooooo fun. We got to feed the kangaroos AND stroke a snake. COOL!!!!
Streets Beach
In Brisbane there is a really cool streets beach. It is a fake beach and everybody can come to it even though it is in the middle of the city! I do not think there is anywhere like it. Next to the beach there are sprinklers which get you AWFULLY wet. When we were drying off we noticed a group of people taking photo shoots and lifeguards asked to help who were being humiliated. It is really relaxing and is a perfect place just to chill!!!! 🙂
Straddie Sunset
On our first night on North Stradbroke Island we were treated to a fantastic sunset. Not only was it colourful, but it seemed to change in colour and character from minute to minute. Not sure if this was unusual, but the second night’s sunset was certainly not worth blogging about.
Despite the appearance, it has actually been rather chilly over the last few days and the day after this sunset was very wet. But this didn’t dampen our enthusiasm as you can tell from Louisa’s post below!
How ya goin’ buddy?
While we’ve been in Australia we’ve been listening to some of the interesting phrases people use that we’re not familiar with. One of these is “how ya goin” which is used as a general greeting at least here in S Queensland. As we got on the ferry to go to Straddie the woman who docked the boat was saying it to everyone as they boarded. Anna turned to Beth and said “why’s she asking us how we’re going when she can see we’re getting on the ferry?”
Generally it’s not a problem understanding Aussies. The only difficulty I’ve had was when a woman at a coffee shop asked me if I wanted a “Muggle Cap” for my drinks. I asked her to repeat it and it was only when her colleague asked me did I realise she was asking if I wanted a mug or cup….
Straddie Sightings
Having been in Brisbane 5 days we thought we should take a side trip and try out somewhere else. Stradbroke island, being a relaxing location for a holiday was our choice. For a beach lover (like myself!) Straddie is a perfect area just to chill in paradise! On our first few hours on the island we attempted a long walk to the point were you can spot humpback whales. Though exhausted we managed it to the aparent town (around four shops.) where we picked up a maginum. YUM! On the walk back we saw a phenomenal sunset which included orange sky, scarlet clouds and amazingly beautiful silhoettes of plants and bats stretching out over the bay. The next day (though rainy!) was the day we decided to go to the point and at least TRY to spot some whales, dolphins, turtles and loads more marine wildlife. The biggest of a whale seen was one breaching (jumping) in the distance. Unfortunately, being taken with some dolphins in a group below i missed this one off chance. BOOOO! We mainly saw blows, backs and fins as notice of the whales themselves. On our leaving date we checked out of our youth hostel, left our bags in their hopefully capable hands and made our way down to the point to see some more. This is when we got a very close up whale’s fin. It was interesting to see people doing a survey about humpbacks (a species of whale) and had seen a whopping 872 humpbacks since the 1st of June!!!! 🙂 Pretty good I’d say. It was an unforgetable experience and i hope Straddie is on our list of into-the-future smallish holidays!!!!:-)
The Rimmer Family on Tour 